When You're Gone
by Prosper-the-XVIII
Summary: They had always been best friends. But he had loved her. Always had and always would. Charlie Weasley is torn apart by Tonks's death. All he can think about being her, he retreats from his family and loses himself in a reminiscent world of remembering. Remembering the past, remembering HER. And there's only one person who can bring him back...
1. Chapter 1

**Harry Potter CharliexTonks-shippy fic based round When You're Gone by Avril Lavigne. Since someone has threatened to report me unless I removed the lyrics, all I can do is reccomend that you listen to the song this is based around whilst reading. Okay, I got the idea for this from a Tumblr thingy. Basically the idea is Charlie Weasly has just found out that Tonks is dead and he takes it far from well, and finds himself having a load of Tonks-related dreams. WARNING! May make die-hard Tonks fans like me cry. Enjoy!**

* * *

"Bill, it isn't funny any more, okay? It's hard enough knowing that I'm never going to see Fred again, Tonks is _not dead_, okay? Just...shut up, okay?" Charlie shot a glare at his older brother, and continued staring at his hands, letting out a deep sigh. It was killing him that he was always the last to find these things out, and now Bill was messing with him. Bill had been rubbing it in his face recently that Tonks had never thought of him in the same way he thought of her (complete head-over-heels love,) and had instead fallen for and married a werewolf ten years her senior, and now telling him that she was _dead _was just crossing the line. No. There was no way he was going to believe any more of Bill and his stupid lies. Never. Not at a time like this.  
"Charlie, as much as I'd like to be messing with you, I'm not. they had her funeral last week. We all saw her when she was-" Bill rested his hand on his brother's leg. His voice broke on the last word, and it took him two tries. "When she was...d-dead..."

Charlie couldn't speak when he saw the look in Bill's eyes. No, this wasn't possible...no, no, no, no, no, no, no, NO! But he could tell. Bill wasn't lying. "You can force Veritaserum down my throat if you really must, but I swear on Errol's life, I'm not just trying to annoy you. She's...gone. So's Remus. At about the same time, actually...It...it was Bellatrix..." Charlie couldn't take it. He stood up and stormed back in the vague direction of The Burrow. He didn't go in the door, though. He just...went. No idea where he was going. He just knew he needed to get there.

* * *

"Charlie..."  
"Get lost, Ron," Charlie muttered inaudibly through the pillow he had his face in. If he hadn't known that Bellatrix Lestrange wasn't dead already (thanks, Mum), he would have hunted her down and personally torn her limb from limb for what she had done to his poor Dora. There was no forgiveness in him. He just wanted to...Well, he didn't know. He wanted to make Bellatrix suffer. Really. But she was dead. he couldn't avenge Tonks.  
"It's Ginny!" The voice, which now was proven to belong to his younger sister, said indignantly. "Mum just sent me to say that your dinner's in the owl."  
"I hope he enjoyed it," Charlie groaned. He felt the extra weight of Ginny sit down on the bed beside him and run her hand through his hair.  
"Charlie, it's been three days, you can't just lie here moping for the rest of your life."  
"Well it's what I bloody well plan to do, so go and tell that to Mum."  
"Charlie, you're taking this too hard. It wasn't your fault, but there's nothing that you can do about it. I know you were really good friends with her, but even if you'd been there, you couldn't hve done anything-"  
"If I'd been there, I would have taked the damned curse instead of her. Ginny, you don't get it. You don't understand how I feel now and you never will. Nobody will ever know how I feel. I loved her..."  
"What do you mean? i mean, she was okay when she wasn't doing stupid stuff to her hair and nose, but-"  
"That's not the point. She was smart and funny and...Well, what I liked most about her was that because she was a metamorphagus, she could've made herself the most beautiful woman in the world, but she didn't. She always had this really in-your-face pink hair - I remember her getting told off by her mum on our first ever day at Hogwarts because it was neon green - and I liked her _because _she was always making herself look stupid. Just for a laugh. That's kind of why she did everything, really. Just for a laugh. I mean, we've always been friends, but I've had this crush on her since we were in third year or something like that, and we went out for a bit, but then she met Lupin...I never had a problem with him, but I always felt like he'd stolen something from me...God, I just miss her so much..."  
"Charlie, I'm not really in the mood for a heart-to-heart right now. Sorry and all that, but I've got to go..." Ginny stood up and left, and he sunk back down into the kind of Charlie-shaped patch of sweat that had accumulated on the sheets over the course of the three days he had inhabited his - well, Ron's, though it was temporarily his - bedroom for, hermit-style. If you looked up the word 'anguish' in the dictionary, he was pretty sure you would find a photo of him. He felt, quite frankly, like crap.

Closing his eyes, his every heartbeat sounding like the word 'Tonks' repeated over and over again like a torturous mantra, Charlie sunk into a deep, uneasy sleep...


	2. Chapter 2

_"Nymphadora! Would you please do something with your _hair_?" Andromeda Tonks scowled at her young daughter in anguish, trying another botched attempt at flattening the eleven year old metamorphagus's fluorescent green pixie coif.  
"Mum! I've done about six different things with my hair already and you didn't like any of them. Would you just put up with this already, it's not like you have to be _seen _with me or anything! Bye...I can't believe I'm saying this, but I'll miss you," Charlie kept looking at the girl as she boarded the train - she was pretty impossible to lose with hair like that - until he felt his mother cuff him around the head.  
"Charlie! Don't stare!" He felt his mum shake a little with a silent sob as she pulled him into a hug. "Good luck."  
"Mum-" Charlie gagged, struggling for air, smothered in his overprotective mum's embrace. "Look, I know it's my first term at Hogwarts, but can I breathe now?"  
"Sorry," Molly said quickly, holding Charlie out at arm's length and attempting to smooth the lock of hair that had lost all sense of gravity down, and then failing as it pinged up again. "I'm going to miss you, you know that. Enjoy yourself - oh, and don't get into too much trouble!" "I won't! Fred! George! I'll send you guys a Hogwarts toilet seat!" Charlie waved to his five year old younger brothers, who were giving each other that evil twin look.  
"You will do no such thing! Behave yourself!" Molly shouted, taking one last look at her son before the train began to move forwards._

* * *

_"Is anyone sitting here?" After a little searching around, Charlie had managed to find the girl from the platform with the green hair; alone in a compartment, probably because of the manically hooting barn owl in a cage beside her.  
"Erm, no. Do you have a problem with insane amounts of noise, though?"  
"Not at all. You should see our family owl. Like a bloody feathered klaxon." The girl laughed at this remark, then flinched as she stuch a finger in the gap between the bars of her owl cage. Judging by the blood all over her hand, the owl had...nipped? no, that was an understatement. Okay, though this isn't actually possible, it looked like the owl had bitted a chunk out of her hand.  
"Behold, Victory, the world's first vampire owl!" The girl said as she tried to mop the blood from her hand with a corner of her travelling cloak. Charlie watched in awe as the ends of her hair turned white for just a few seconds.  
"How did you-"  
"I'm a metamorphagus," she said quickly, extending her non-owl-wounded hand. "I'm Tonks." Charlie took it.  
"Charlie. Tonks? You must've given your parents hell for that one."  
"No, that's my surname. My first name's Nymphdora. I did give them more than hell for that. Call me that on pain of death, okay?"  
"Yes, ma'am. Hey, you know how you said you were a metamor...thingy? Can you, like, change the colour of your hair and stuff all the time?"  
"Oh, I can do better than that, my friend!" And Charlie found himself practically on the floor in fits of laughter as he watched her turn her face into that of a hummingbird..._

* * *

Charlie jolted awake, opening his eyes and bursting into tears almost instantly when he remembered what had become of the chatty eleven year old in his dream. "Tonks..." he cried, staring at the ceiling, tears in his eyes and heart in his mouth. "Tonks, I need you. Come back to me..."


End file.
